Film about Jewish partisans touches local family

By POLINA OLSEN

article created on: 2009-02-01T00:00:00

For Portlander Steve Gradow, the movie Defiance hit close to home. The story of the Bielski Otriad, a Jewish partisan group that fought the Nazis, mirrored much of his father’s experience in Poland. 

“He was digging graves and watching people get shot,” Gradow said. “He escaped into the forest and learned how to fire a rifle. They took kids 16 to 17 years old and made them into fighters.”

Jeff Gradow, Steve’s father, now lives in Los Angeles. Part of the Shoah Foundation, he often speaks to schools about his life. 

“Some of the kids are older than I was when I became a partisan,” he told the Jewish Review in a telephone interview. His story started in Mlawa, Poland, a town 80 miles northwest of Warsaw.

“Sept. 1, 1939, the first bomb dropped,” he said, referring to the German takeover of western Poland. His father fled when local Poles of German descent planned to arrest him and settle old scores. Leaving his wife and two daughters behind, he grabbed 14-year-old Jeff and fled to Bialystock in Russian-controlled eastern Poland.

Hitler and Stalin had signed a pact not to invade each other’s territory. All that changed in June 1941 when the Nazis stormed Bialystock. 

“We heard rifle shots,” Jeff Gradow said. “My father told me to go behind a brick oven. Someone opened the door and threw in a grenade.” 

Gradow pulled his father out of the ensuing flames but he died later that day. Nazis rounded up Jews and forced them to clean streets and toilets.

“They executed a lot of young Russian soldiers,” Gradow said. “I was in a group where we had to dig ditches and bury them. Before they shot them, they had to take off their clothing. Some crossed themselves and some did not.”

Then, the Nazis loaded the Jewish men and boys into trucks and drove them to Baronovich, Belarus. 

“First we worked on building a new train station,” Gradow said. “During the rainy season, the highway got so muddy military trucks couldn’t pass. We cut trees, laid them across the highway and put dirt on top.”

“I made up my mind; I had to do something,” Gradow said. “When the guard sat down for lunch, I ran into the woods. After a half hour, I heard rifle shots. I had a hunch they killed a prisoner because another went missing.”

After three days of running and subsisting on blackberries, Gradow stumbled upon partisans. Hundreds of independent groups operated from the forest. Roughly, 140 men and 10 women made up Gradow’s brigade. About half were Jews; others were Russian officers and soldiers.

“I rested up and became a human being again,” Gradow said. “There weren’t enough guns so they’d take only the best men to train. I was lucky. They took me right away.”

Small teams cut telephone lines, larger groups blew up police stations. 

“If we had enough dynamite, we’d put it on the highway,” Gradow said. 

When officials got word of their whereabouts, they relocated their camp. They moved about 12 times over the next two years.

“We’d dig the earth four feet deep,” Gradow said, explaining how they built their huts. The sides and the roof were birch tree branches.” They covered their shelter with dirt and slept 12 men per room. The weather reached below zero. 

“You got used to it,” Gradow said.

“We had no problem with food,” Gradow continued. “Our whole group would go to villages and circle around. We’d tell the farmers—you have two cows, we’ll take one. The commander told them they’d get paid after the war.” 

The group led the cows into the woods where their own butcher waited. 

“We’d put the meat in big holes in the ground,” Gradow said. “We’d cover potatoes with straw and throw dirt on top. The potatoes didn’t freeze. We always had a shortage of salt.”

They washed in cold water and changed clothes maybe every six months. And, unwritten rules prohibited friendships or discussion of former lives. 

“We never sat down with a group of four or five and told stories,” Gradow said. “We just talked about what we’d do next.”

By 1943, the Soviets contacted the partisans. They airdropped weapons and tried to unite the groups. After an elite Soviet division absorbed Gradow’s brigade, a bullet wound sent him to the hospital for six months. After the war, he returned to Mlawa. 

Here, he first learned about the concentration camps. The Nazis had murdered his entire family at Treblinka. Gradow moved to a displaced person’s camp in Germany and in 1949 joined a great-uncle in America.

“There were 30,000 documented partisans,” Steve Gradow said, reflecting on his father’s experience. “Less than 3,000 are left today.” 

He hopes the movie will enlighten many who don’t realize Jews organized and fought the Germans.

Meanwhile, Jeff Gradow and the Mlawa Society in Israel and the Diaspora keep the memory alive.

“Freedom is not free,” Jeff Gradow said. “You have to fight.”

For more information on Jewish partisans and Mlawa, visit www.jewishpartisans.org and www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/mlawa/mlawa.html.

This story was made possible by a grant from the Judith and Edwin Cohen Foundation.